From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

1. How does the extract open? What tone is the first paragraph written in?

2. Why didn't the main character throw out his late wife's prsonal belongings?

3. What expressive means are used by the author to drive his reasons home to the reader?

4. What seems to be the man's problem, judging by the two sentences of the second paragraph?

5. What was wrong with the man's wife? What stylistic devices make us understand it?

6. What is the author's purpot of using so many names of pills?

7. Comment on the role of the figure of speech which rounds the fourth paragraph. What other tropes and figures of speech convey the man's fury directed at the pills?

8. What stylistic devices bring the extract to the end? Speak on their function.

He wondered why he'd never gotten round to throwing the entire pharmacy out. For the same reason he'd kept all her clothing, all her jewelry, he supposed. Whatever that reason was called. Something the heart stoked up. The demands of love, the deranged idea that you kept the essence of the person by hanging on to their possessions – as if one bright afternoon she might just materialize under a halo in the doorway and say, Sorry I left you alone this long, my love. He didn't need this and he didn't need to look up at Harriet's photograph either, goddamit – that oval face and those solemn eyes with melancholy secrets hidden in them, things she'd never explained, couldn't have explained, monsters trapped in the dead-end labyrinth of her mind.

You drifted from me, he thought. And I fill the cold emptiness any way I can.

Darcy came back in the room. "Here." She was holding out a pll to him. "I'm not sure it's the smart thing to take it with brandy," she said.

He looked at the sky0blue tab. It was called Limbitrol, he remembered. It was only one of a bunch with names that rolled easily off the tongue. Elavil and Surmontil. They sounded like futuristic candies. Here, kids, chew these down. Try some Prozac while you're at it. They'd done nothing for Harriet except drive her deeper into that impenetrable pocket where she'd lived her life. He placed the pill in his mouth and swallowed it with brandy. Quickly. He didn't want the taste of it.

The telephone was ringing. The sound, shrill and unexpected and yet so goddam commonplace, went through Samsa's head like a vibrating ice pick. Darcy answered, then handed the phone to him.

From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

1. Read the extract below and say what it is about.

2. Do the first and the following paragraphs of the extract stand in contrast? What is described in each of them?

3. What can you say about Samsa’s imagination? What techniques does the author use to depict his flow of thoughts?

4. What ruins the serene picture in Samsa’s mind? What stylistic device is it?

5. Is the simile used in the third paragraph powerful? Why couldn’t Samsa grasp the message of the letter judging by Brodsky’s words?

6. Do you share Brodsky’s stateme? Are you a fatalist?

Samsa went out into the corridor. He walked a few yards, paused a moment to drink from a water fountain. Bending to the spout, he closed his eyes and imagined himself drinking from a mountain stream, the air around him chill and clear and his heart filled with the joy of being, and if he opened his eyes he’d see mountains, deep green valleys, ahawk circling freely and full-winged in the sky. But the water tasted of the chemicals the city treatmentplant pumped int it.

He splashed his face, let water spill down his shirt, then went back to his ffice.

Brodsky tossed a sheet of paper on the desk. Samsa picked up the sheet. He stared at the handwriting and somehow couldn’t get beyond iit to the message it cntained, as if the meanings of the words were imprisoned within the letters.

“Life’s a bitch sometimes,” Brodsky said.